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Hegelian Mambo strikes again

In a useful series of posts (see here and here, for example), Lawrence Auster has been chronicling the shameful acquiescence of too many conservatives in the advancement of the homosexual agenda in the military.

The recent congressional vote is incorrectly known as "the repeal of DADT," but I will not refer to it that way, as that implies that there was a "DADT law." Bill Clinton defied Congress, which had expressly outlawed homosexual service in the military, and instituted the DADT policy as the liberal policy of its day. Shamefully (more below on this), George W. Bush did not return to following the actual law as written, and hence people came to be under the misimpression that DADT was "the law" and was the "new conservative" policy, the new line to be held and defended. Hence the recent repeal of the ban on homosexuals in the military was referred to incessantly and misleadingly as "the repeal of DADT."

This point is related to what I think was an important reason for the despair and silence of so many conservatives, or "conservatives": Bush's inaction. After Bush came into the White House and did nothing to return us to the pre-Clinton situation, to actually attempting to exclude homosexuals from the military, it became evident that, in all probability, no one was ever going to do this. If conservatives pounded the pavement, knocked themselves out, and elected a Republican President, it wouldn't matter. This was now water under the bridge. And meanwhile we were subjected to the postmodern spectacle of open homosexuals serving in the military and complaining about the fact that they couldn't serve openly in the military. One commentator at VFR claims--and I completely believe this and would have guessed as much--that pro-homosexual brainwashing has already been in place in the military under the rubric of training to avoid "sexual harassment."

This was a status quo that it was difficult to get very excited about defending. And how many people were prepared to say that Bush messed up, that we needed to go back and reinstate the actual Congressional policy? How radical that would be. One would be a voice crying in the wilderness.

Meanwhile, over a period of decades, America got used to the idea that homosexual service in the military was a fait accompli, and Americans were made to feel unendingly sensitive about doing anything that might seem to insult these brave "service people." And the faux "conservatives" like Goldberg et. al. have no interest at all in actually being social conservatives.

The thugs of intolerance are getting all geared up, now, for even more crackdowns on normalcy in the military. According to this report, they liken any desire of straight soldiers not to shower with openly homosexual soldiers to racism, and they have a simple solution to worries that separate facilities will have to be built: The normal people should be forced to get over it.

Now, the elephant in the room here is the simple matter of physical privacy and modesty. Why are males not (yet) made to shower with females in the military? Why maintain any vestiges of separation of the sexes at all? Well (how childish liberals are, that we should even need to spell this out), because it's legitimate for people in the military not to want to be undressing and bunking with people who might be sexually desiring them. The "report" says that this is because of a fear, arising from "stereotypes," of inappropriate behavior. Not necessarily, though of course that is a legitimate concern. But if that were all there were to it, and if simple training and orders could take care of the problem (as they assume it can in the case of homosexuals), we could just force men and women to shower together and strictly charge them all not to engage in inappropriate behavior. (You can stop laughing now.) But the point is simply that people prefer not to give up their physical privacy, day in and day out, with other people who have or may plausibly have sexual feelings for them, regardless of whether anything is said or done to act on those feelings. This is right. This is good. This is a sign of some remaining shreds of normal human feeling in our society where sexual matters are concerned.

The military members understand this and are expressing dismay, but that dismay will be of none account, and the machine of military discipline will grind them to powder if they don't shut up.

I have no great hopes that anything I say here will make any difference, but I do want to speak directly to my fellow conservatives: We should make note here of how the failure of the Bush administration actually to turn back the actions of the previous administration led to despair in the conservative ranks and to a failure to launch strong opposition. I do not claim to know what would have happened in the larger society, but at least the issue would have been kept live. Conservatives, unfortunately, can be as sheep-like as the population generally. They look to their leadership to tell them what issues we are currently fighting over. Within the conservative ranks, Bush's DOD could have told us that the line to be held was not the liberal DADT, invented by Bill Clinton, but was the actual policy on the books: Homosexuals do not have a place in the military, and there are good reasons for this. The arguments would have remained in the air and on the table, and conservatives would have calibrated their interests, arguments, and expectations accordingly. But none of that happened. Clinton's policy was accepted as the new normal, and the issues and reasons that motivated the original law were abandoned.

We have a right to ask for better in our leadership. Now, our so-called "conservative" leadership is rushing headlong in the other direction, rushing to embrace the homosexual agenda and even to try to baptize it as "conservative." What I am preaching here is known as "purism," but here is my warning: Those who have no purist instincts will always lack the resources to hold back the tide of increasing evil and perversion from the left. In the end, there is nothing, however insane, however destructive, that will not be accepted and acceptable to so-called "conservatives" so long as the left can continually distract us by threatening something else and worse. Anyone who thought that Bush's acquiescence in DADT was okay because it was "better than letting homosexuals serve openly in the military" needs to recognize that that very acquiescence was part of what paved the way for the eventual move to the next stage in the homosexual agenda for the military. It always works that way, and we are mere fools and tools if we do not recognize that fact.

Comments (142)

I am not very sure just why a homosexual must, and apparently they must, inform people of their sexual drives.
How does one go about it? Is there a technique, is timing a factor, are some people honored with the news and others left in the cold dark.
If a right may I not go about announcing my proclivities to who ever may not be interested?
But if people already are in the military then plainly their private desires are meaningless to their service and performance. And if not, why join now?
And if purely a civil rights issue are they, have they been, asked to sit in the back of the bus by a homophobic bus driver.
And how did he know?
Or denied the vote?
Privacy isn't what it used to be. But the compulsion for causes to fight for is undimmed, a mark of the modern, unsettled and insecure mind.
Bring out Peter Singer, waiting in the wings with a dead chicken.

John, I'm going to be very direct with you: I believe it was legitimate for them in previous decades to _ask_ someone's "sexual orientation" and to _discriminate_ against him in admission to the military if he was homosexual.

The points you are making about people's unnecessary communicativeness are legitimate points that come up a lot nowadays, and they may be quite relevant when it comes to, say, hiring a used car salesman.

I think a direct and complete ban is entirely legitimate, and always has been, in contexts of close physical interaction, such as arise in the military (or in all-boys' schools, in swimming instruction, phys. ed. teaching, scouting and camping, etc.), where privacy is little to nil.

I also think homosexuals should be excluded from the pastorate and from the priesthood. This includes "orientation" without action.

@Lydia: Do you think it's wrong for homosexuals to serve in the military, or do you think that it's only wrong for them to tell other people they are homosexual? And why is it wrong for them to tell other people they are homosexual? I do not understand what is wrong with me telling people I am a homosexual, when I am allowed to tell people I am a botanist. And I desire just as much to share my love of men with other people, as I do desire to share my love of plants.

"In the end, there is nothing, however insane, however destructive, that will not be accepted and acceptable to so-called "conservatives" so long as the left can continually distract us by threatening something else and worse."

This is the best general point in the post, and it is effectively how they (Progressives, liberals) use the concept of the Mean against conservatives. That's how the window of politically/socially acceptable options gets shifted, and deviancy is continually defined down.

I can't wait for the day when a gay-male Muslim jihadist suicide bomber, suffering from a terminal disease, blows up an abortion clinic on which eminent domain will be employed in order to put up a mosque. The liberals' heads will explode. Here's why.

He committed suicide, so maybe it's like the Rutgers kid. But wait, he did it in the name of Islam. So, maybe we made him do it because we won't allow Israel to be destroyed so that the Palestinians may take its place. But wait. He was suffering from a terminal disease. So, maybe he killed himself because he was exercising his autonomy for euthanasia. But wait. He blew up an abortion clinic. So, he's a right-wing prolife nut. But wait, they want to replace it with a mosque. So, perhaps we was responding to anti-Islamic backlash against the building of the mosque.

It's all so confusing when moral principles are discarded. Welcome to the world of liberalism; no rule of law, just armchair psycho-analysis pretending to be justice.

Thanks for this post, Lydia. Conservatives should have fought to retain the outright ban years ago. I think there are two powerful reasons this kind of wickedness has made such astounding progress in recent years: 1) the topic is highly repulsive and unfit for decent company or polite conversation; 2) social conservatives can't help but believe that the problem is a small one and if we just ignore it, it will quietly go away. There is also the intimidation factor: those who oppose the homosexualization of everything are often accused or suspected of being closet homosexuals themselves, otherwise why would they care? So here we are in the new Sodom and Gomorrah. I'll have more to say later. Happy New Year to all.

I know that firezdog, above, isn't really asking in good faith, but for the sake of clarity, I'll answer part of the question:

I believe that it is enormously unwise and bad public policy to allow homosexuals to serve in the military. Therefore, under good public policy, direct questions will be asked as part of recruitment with the express intent of weeding out homosexuals. Under this system of good policy, yes, it will be directly _wrong_ for homosexuals to get in, because the only way they will be able to do so will be by lying.

To repeat: I do _not_ support the Clinton DADT policy. I think it should have been "repealed" in the sense that we should have returned and should now return to an "Ask and discriminate" policy.

This is not to say that I could never imagine some other situations, as I said above, where something akin to a DADT policy might make sense, if the people involved really tried to abide by it and to respect others who didn't want to hear about their sexual activities rather than abusing it as a mere step in an overall homosexual agenda. The military is, in any event, not one of those contexts.

However, upon further reflection, I have changed my mind: Wehner is wrong and in a fundamental sense, there are some lines in the sand that shouldn't be crossed, and calling a group that pushes for homosexual rights "conservative" is one of those lines. As Peter LaBarbera eloquently put it:

"Shame on CPAC for defending the absurd proposition that one can be 'conservative' while embracing moral surrender – in this case the idea espoused by GOProud of the government granting 'rights' and benefits based on sinful sexual conduct long regarded as anathema to biblical and Judeo-Christian values."

I do think that Auster is over the top in some of his rhetoric condemning other conservatives (what else is new in 2011) and I think Lydia misses an important point about Bush and America in the year 2000 -- the issue of gays serving the in the military was not a pressing issue for many Americans and in fact, unfortunately for conservatives, our fellow countrymen are increasingly coming to think of the homosexual rights movement as non-threatening and acceptable. Obviously, this is a problem and conservatives will have to fight hard to reverse this trend (and we have won significant victories at the polls when the issue of redefining marriage comes up), but I'm not sure a 'fire-breathing', "let's kick the gays out of the military" conservative candidate running for President would be attractive to a wide swath of our fellow Americans. Perhaps I'm wrong and the right candidate could effectively articulate the conservative position, but let's not pretend that he won't face significant opposition from all the usual suspects and the word "hate" will be thrown around liberally (pun intended).

I do think that social conservatives need to start demanding that their candidates start endorsing more serious positions on these issues (i.e. no gays in the military), especially now during this seemingly libertarian moment, when the focus tends to be on the overweening State and rolling back the Federal behemoth.

P.S. Totally off topic -- I see Steve Burton standing in a plaza in Bosnia shouting to an eager crowd: "No one should dare to beat you again!" ;-)

The thing is, though, Jeff, Bush could have _done_ something even if he didn't run on a specific plank of doing something. It could have been done openly, with an announcement, after the election, but without an enormous amount of fanfare: "Okay, Congress said in 1993 [I think is correct] that we should continue the policy of having no homosexuals in the military. President Clinton refused to enforce that policy and tried to subvert it with DADT; we are now returning to the original policy and intent." And instruct recruiters and officers accordingly.

I think you are probably right that the issue wasn't perceived as urgent in 2000, but that's just the problem: If at every moment we are just leaving things to continue in some track that was set for them by the liberals, which we resisted at the time, and are continually moving on to some new and more "urgent" issue, we'll always assist the country's move to the left. After all, there _had_ been a fight over this in the 1990's, and in terms of the actual _law_, the left lost. Clinton's move was lawless. So at one point this _was_ perceived as urgent; that's why Congress stood up to Clinton. In essence, Bush allowed Clinton and the leftists to win, to get away with thumbing their noses at a wise law, even though as far as I can tell he had full powers to reverse Clinton's action. It seems to me that every conservative President elected should be asking himself what dreadful policies were put in place by executive power by his predecessor that lie within his power immediately to reverse. (Let me add that the liberals/Democrats seem to do this in the the other direction. It's Republicans who are too nice or too wimpy or too inattentive to do so.) Especially when it comes to the military, there might well be lots of these policies. We have to clean house at some point. Otherwise it's like having somebody poison you, yelling and resisting at the time, and then just vaguely forgetting about it and never going and getting the antidote, even when you're free to do so.

Politically, we're the ADHD nation. We can never keep our attention on anything for more than a few weeks. Conservatives of all people need to resist that. Like the jihad, the fight against the left must be seen as a long-term struggle; we can be sure that the enemy always sees it that way.

Jeff, that sort of attitude is fine for a political party with its finger in the air, trying to find what position will be most attractive to the median voter.

But it's not really the attitude a movement based on principle should have. Indeed you're illustrating Lydia's points - and some of Auster's

Does the conservative movement boil down to "what will get republicans elected to office?" These days, probably. But Ought it be?

The role of the Republican Party is naturally "what will get Republicans elected to office?" (and, before the peanut gallery chimes in again, the role of the Democratic Party is naturally "what will get Democrats elected to office?"); but that's the crux of the problem, when movements supposedly based in principle let their interests be aligned with that of politcal parties.

I like what you say here: "It seems to me that every conservative President elected should be asking himself what dreadful policies were put in place by executive power by his predecessor that lie within his power immediately to reverse."

I even think that during an election some of these issues don't need to get attention but then once a true conservative takes power, they can go ahead and start reversing the bad executive policies (by the way -- there are a lot of affirmative action policies that were at least initially implemented by executive order -- I wonder how many are still on the books and could be reversed by a courageous executive?) Of course there will be howls of protest from the Left, but as you say, that is to be expected and will be necessary if we are ever to reverse the tide.

JamesR,

Good points and I don't necessarily disagree with you but before we can change laws, replace bad judges with good judges, change excutive appointments, etc. we need to get into power. Like it or not politics is the art of the possible and there will always be compromises on the way to power. But I'm coming to understand and believe that those compromises need not include basic conservative moral principles under which a healthy Christian society will flourish (i.e. homosexual sex is a sin and should be treated as such by society's laws and institutions).

DADT was a liberal foot in the door, and I think it was a bad idea, as is allowing them to serve openly. But I don't lay the blame on Bush for not repealing it, nor think it reasonable to expect he should. Presidents have limitations, and they have to adhere to public opinion, and I think it is hard to deny it has shifted a lot on the homosexual issue, sadly.

Laws and rules are teachers no question, but often they trail too. Sadly, our nation generally is not well-connected to our warrior culture, and I don't think it is true that DADT is a driver of opinon outside military circles. I argue with Christians all the time who argue the "orientation without action" line to argue for letting gays into Christian colleges as long as they don't "practice". My experience with young Christians who buy into the issue that "discriminating" against homosexuals is akin to racism --the party line-- is that I'd guess many might not even know about DADT.

I personally don't think the issue in military or living quarters has much to do with someone looking at you that might be attracted. I think it has to do with the moral debasement that tends to go along with it, as well as the sexual tensions it creates with others if it is allowed openly. The same issues arise with opposite sex of course too, and that is one of the problems with women in the military in many roles. There was a case James Mitchener told in his autobiography (he's a screaming bore of a lib) where a homosexual sargent had somehow seduced a few young soldiers on a Pacific Island in WWII and manipulated them for control and it degenerated into a love trianglish thing that pitted one homosexual group against another in an armed struggle involving defensive barricades. It was all covered up and all honorably discharged. That is an extreme of course, but anyone who thinks that that there won't be predatory homosexuals and that shame will disappear as a weapon is dreaming.

Basically Barone wants us to keep "dancing", but fails to acknowledge how debased the current culture is and how defeatist it is for conservatives to declare a truce when we've lost half (or more?) the battlefield to the liberals!

Presidents have limitations, and they have to adhere to public opinion, and I think it is hard to deny it has shifted a lot on the homosexual issue, sadly.

Well, I'm not really sure I understand this point, Mark. Are you saying that it wasn't legally in Bush's power to enforce the actual law on the books in 2000 against homosexuals serving in the military? As far as I know, it definitely was in his power. Are you saying that Bush would not have been re-elected in 2004 if he had done so? That would be an extremely strong position. After all, he could have pointed out that he, unlike Bill Clinton, was enforcing the actual law as it stood! Remember, too, that that was eleven years ago, and closer to Congress's defiance of Clinton in the 90's than it is to us now. And in any event, I think it would have been worth the risk. If we never do anything right, not even enforcing actual, wise laws that might be unpopular, for fear of not being re-elected, we have a big mess in more ways than one. ("Oh, that law isn't very popular. Just ignore it. You might not get re-elected.")

I personally don't think the issue in military or living quarters has much to do with someone looking at you that might be attracted.

I acknowledge that the other issues you raise are real and pertinent, Mark, but I'm surprised that you think this "doesn't have much to do with it." The troops seem to disagree with you and would feel uncomfortable per se showering with open homosexuals. (See the article I linked above.) That's why the DOD is already saying they have to be forced to do so. After all, if it doesn't matter having a homosexual man look at you naked, would you say the same of showering with a woman? It seems to me absolutely obvious that the discomfort the troops are expressing is with the per se complete abandonment of all physical privacy with people who have admitted that they have sexual feelings for people like oneself.

Jeff, that's a pretty blah, not to mention stupid, NRO article. What is almost unintentionally funny about it is that *by his own lights* he sketches a country *deeply divided* about homosexual issues. And he declines to mention what is glaringly obvious, which is that the homosexual lobby is not _quitting_. Far from a "truce" on those issues we have an on-going offensive from the homosexual "rights" crowd, and we have that precisely because the country as a whole has not yet given the homosexual activists what they demand! How can we possibly be in a condition of truce when we have Prop. 8 wending its way toward SCOTUS and continual pushes for non-discrimination statutes and same-sex "marriage" all over the country? This hardly looks like a truce to anyone whose eyes are open.

It sounds like he wanted to say something that sounded wise somehow and thought of this, then decided just to pretend that the facts fit the picture when they self-evidently don't.

"Basically Barone wants us to keep "dancing", but fails to acknowledge how debased the current culture is and how defeatist it is for conservatives to declare a truce when we've lost half (or more?) the battlefield to the liberals!"

The NR brand of conservatism (and conservatism in general) has always been about the welfare of the plutocracy. They are beginning to understand that the gay thing was killing them generationally (and some of them or their kids are gay) so you all get cut loose. You really need to understand things from their POV - how can the culture be debased when their bonuses and houses keep getting bigger? Or, alternatively, even if the culture is debased, our bonuses and houses keep getting bigger, so who cares?

And if someone is willing to take up arms to defend their situation, well, what's the problem?

Jeff, also, it goes without saying that I'm outraged by Barone's deeply dishonest attempt to induce SoCons to lay down their arms on extremely important issues without actually discussing those issues or asking what might still be done, etc., simply by smirkingly informing them that they should get over it because we already have a de facto truce. The man is an empty suit, without conspicuous principles of any kind, and the fate of the Laodiceans will be his (if he's lucky and it isn't something much worse).

In the previous comment I was merely pointing out his most glaring and purely factual error.

Are you saying that it wasn't legally in Bush's power to enforce the actual law on the books in 2000 against homosexuals serving in the military?

No clearly was, and I'd have supported him if he had.

Are you saying that Bush would not have been re-elected in 2004 if he had done so?

No, I don't think that either. All I'm really saying is he could be forgiven for doing the calculation (suppose this is how it went) that the resistance to gays in the military was getting tenous by then and it might not advance the cause to repeal and and might hurt, right or wrong. It all comes down to what political leaders can do, and their theory of governing and how much public opinion is to be respected. But as I said, I'd have supported him if he had, but unfortunately I don't think it would have made it any less likely that Congress would have done what it did in full recognition.

And in any event, I think it would have been worth the risk. If we never do anything right, not even enforcing actual, wise laws that might be unpopular, for fear of not being re-elected, we have a big mess in more ways than one. ("Oh, that law isn't very popular. Just ignore it. You might not get re-elected.")

I agree. I'm only taking a weak position that I'd have supported it if he'd done it, but don't blame him that he didn't. What disgusts me is our secretary of defense on this -Gates.

Troops seem to disagree with you and would feel uncomfortable per se showering with open homosexuals. (See the article I linked above.) That's why the DOD is already saying they have to be forced to do so. After all, if it doesn't matter having a homosexual man look at you naked, would you say the same of showering with a woman? It seems to me absolutely obvious that the discomfort the troops are expressing is with the per se complete abandonment of all physical privacy with people who have admitted that they have sexual feelings for people like oneself.

I was just wanting to make a subtle point. I have some minor anecdotal experience with two gay roommates in college. No I was never gay, just luck of the draw. There were no open showers so I don't know first hand about that, though unwanted attractions towards others actually was a problem.

But really my limited anecdotal experience combined with a philosophical concern. Namely, not to admit of the equivalency to heterosexuality in any way not strictly justified. So I was just wanting to point out that the look of a man to another man can only be so similar with a woman to man, regardless of sexual attraction because there is more going on in the "otherness" of heterosexuality. I'm not at all saying you were doing that, but some can tend to do that and unknowingly give up a little of the game that way. It's best not to be publicly showering with anyone who could be sexually attracted us, but there is still a difference. But this is only an argument for a certain care about the shower argument against gays in the military. Strictly speaking it isn't the same, but it is the same in enough ways to make it bad. Aside from that, it's a perfectly valid, and pretty strong, argument. Like I indicated in my last comment with the WWII example, there is all manner of stuff that can arise when sexual tensions are present in close quarters, even when only one-sided.

Jeff: I agree that politics is the art of the possible, but not everything is politics in the sense of winning office.

Note there is a distinction between winning office and winning power. al here for example is on the side of winning power - including winning power for the real plutocrats (who overwhelmingly vote Democrat and are Liberals). Thus their cause continues to advance (note to al - your plutocrats happily vote for Liberals who promise to raise taxes on "the rich" because they know they won't be the ones paying them, period. They shelter theirs happily, and suck off the public teet through stimulous programs, "green jobs" shams, and the like. Regulation favors entrenced interests that can afford it, and hampers rival upstarts from growing to compete with them. Big government is the natural partner of big business, and vice versa; anyone who is anyone knows this, including I'm betting, yourself).

Anyhow, the conservative partnership with Republicans has been good at winning office. How good has it been in winning power? Compared to its opposition, it has sucked at winning power, at least if you measure that as accomplishing its ostensible aims. This is the theme of Lydia's post, and much of Auster's critique.

Winning office means that we can even pass various measures that would accomplish our goals. Holding power means that liberals who dominate the judiciary even in a supposedly "conservative" era of jurisprudence will just strike it down anyhow. That is just one narrow example.

If politics is the art of the possible, we need to recognize that what the conservative movement has been doing has not worked. In my opinion, it is certainly possible to have opposed and prevented many of these things. Indeed, the "betting money" at the beginning of December was that the "DADT Repeal" wouldn't pass, that the Democrats were just pushing it now to placate their wealthy (plutocrat) donor base.

It was surprising it passed with such ease. Sure, the American people may not have the % opposition to it that they once did - but does 70-30% opposition to the liberal position on immigration prevent them from pressing it? And indeed accomplishing it as the de facto policy (which passing this or that will only serve to ratify, so it hardly makes a difference if the DREAM Act failed now or not - mass illegal immigration will still continue, among other things allowing the plutocrats who support the liberal position on immigration to bid wages of low skilled workers down)? Majority opinion doesn't prevent the left from fighting on behalf of the interests of entrenched, power elites on this issue and much else. Indeed "DADT Repeal," which hardly ranks high on the priorities of average Americans concerned with the economy and jobs, is one such boutique issue.

Indeed, one of the things that makes the "DADT Repeal" so pivotal, such a "wake-up call" is precisely the fact that it was politically possible to prevent it from passing, it's just that those who might otherwise have been expected to put up a fight simply laid down, when even a minimal effort - one that would have cost them nothing politically. It is suffering a defeat without a battle.

Contra-al, too, this was within recent memory something that the conservative movement could be counted on to oppose; thus the initial fight against it that prevented Clinton from overtly accomplishing this goal. So it is not the case that it's been like this "all along" (but, then, al is a polemicist partisan, so what he posts may not even reflect what he actually knows/believes, but simply what he thinks is the best jab he can make at any given time). They have given up on it without a fight.

So I don't buy the argument that they laid down because it wasn't poltically possible to prevent it from happening. They surrenered because their heart was no longer in it - and this sort of retreat is commonplace. (really do read the evil R. L. Dabney quote I linked to above).

I find it fascinating how sexual orientation has replaced conscience as the focus of modern liberalism. For the American Founders, religious liberty was grounded in freedom of conscience, since the devout person simply cannot violate his conscience without offending his God (and perhaps sinning). Today, religiosity is a "choice" and sexual orientation is the center of our souls that we cannot violate without offending our integrity. Religious conscience had to be diminished in order for sexual orientation to ascend, since each cannot be on the throne at the same time. This is why religious conscience must be equated with visceral bigotry, with no reference to the ground of the conscience, the deeply gendered, marital, and generational infrastructure of the Christian story. Our original sin assumes it, and our redemption requires it. For in order for Jesus to be the Son of David, he had to first be the Son of Mary. That same Savior is our bridegroom, and if we are the church, his bride. In order to treat marital coitus as essential to one-flesh communion, and gender as complementary to that communion, one cannot acquiesce to the shallow pieties of this age and remain in any sense "Christian." For, as we have seen even within my profession, it is no longer acceptable to say that there are well-meaning citizens who disagree on this issue, and to tolerate that disagreement with a sense of mutual respect and good manners. For, as we have seen, even our "brothers" will sell us down the river once they realize that their futures and their professional prestige depend on publicly distancing themselves from those in the body of Christ who stand in the tradition of the Church and against the tide of elite opinion.

There are dark days ahead. May God be with his people, and may his people be with Him.

@Lydia: My faith is as good as Socrates (everyone has his schtick). But I have a skeptical disposition, and it expresses itself through questions. I do not want to stop asking questions, because I will tell you very truly, that I think it would be evil and cowardly for me not to ask questions of those I disagree with. I would like, if I can, to agree with everyone, because whenever someone disagrees with me, I take that as a sign I might be wrong. But faith is something coined by experience, so I forgive you if you call me a suspicious man. As the Stoics would say, "You have mentioned only one of my faults."

You seem to think, Lydia (let us always speak to each other directly, if we are going to speak about each other at all, since I define gossip as speaking about but not to someone, and because I believe gossip is bad), that if I go to a public shower and find the men there attractive, I am committing an offense, not just against God, but against those men too, even if I am so discreet and careful not to look at them, that my only contact with them, is passing and accidental. Am I attributing a view to you that is too extreme? Why do you think this is too extreme, if you do?

I think people who set the rules for the open showers you go to should try to keep you out of them, if your situation is what you are indicating, Alex. And it's an interesting trick to go to a shower with no dividing panels and not see the other people in there with you.

You seem to think ... that if I go to a public shower and find the men there attractive, I am committing an offense

firezdog: One doesn't have to think any homosexual desires whatever are an offense. It isn't an offense against God to be tempted. I think sometimes Christians don't acknowledge the complexities of sexual matters generally; just witness the extreme statements made by many Christians about being around members of the opposite sex (never get in a car with a woman, etc.). That Jesus obviously didn't seem to follow such rules never occurs to them.

But the issue is not whether gays can serve in the military --they always have-- it is whether they can *openly* serve by declaring themselves so. This is a big deal. Having possibly conflicted homosexual desires is one thing, declaring to act on them another. This goes way beyond a willful decision to indulge in these desires. This is where the offense comes in. The revulsion in these acts in those that don't so identify is something that shouldn't be denied either --this is people's faculties working as God intended. I do not say revulsion at homosexuals themselves (I myself am proof that there is no revulsion), but revulsion in the acts and lifestyle.

Bottom line is that I take a public statement of identity to be a declaration of private intent. I can see exactly where you're going in your line of argumentation, and I am not persuaded that it works at all. There are clear lines, even if they were muddied by DADT, and we're leaving them now. It's not that the military will collapse, it's just that it has taken several more steps into the swamp of being a social experiment. Some will be much less likely to enlist, as I would be. My experience in being around homosexuals who've "come out" in public is that they're a catty and manipulative bunch of busybodies who flaunt social convention for sport, and the mental picture I have of showering with them isn't a pleasant one, even completely aside from the attraction issue.

I have been struggling this afternoon to find the words that would best represent my thoughts on this issue since, for me, it is a much deeper issue than the level on which it is usually discussed. I just sat down to reread the comments and was most satisfied with Francis Beckwith's analysis of how in these times people call good evil and evil good.

Debating whether human beings should be given full(er) representation in this nation based on their abnormal appetite for a spiritually, psychologically, and physically dysfunctional sexual expression, is beyond reason. Homosexuality is in itself unreasonable and, contrary to the propaganda of its proponents, it does not represent diversity. Man and man is sameness. Only heterosexuality reflects diversity in its union of a man and a woman.

To force the military to accept applicants who engage in a behavior that is detrimental to the stability of the group is a purposeful strategy to compromise the effectiveness of our defense.

@Mark: If you can see where I am going, I do not mind if you tell me. I am not trying to trick anyone, I hope -- though arguments can become tricks, if we are not careful with them.

I think that if we take this line of reasoning too far, though, we should admit to ourselves that no one has a right to privacy from anybody else. Now I know probably no one here believes that, and yet I want to know precisely why that is wrong, if it is, and under what conditions we are allowed privacy.

Lydia, your policy would not work, for instance, in a culture like ancient Greek or Rome, with public baths. In that situation it is going to be inevitable that people see and are sexually aroused by each other. As disturbing as it is, we must admit that some men are aroused when they see other men. We do not know why this is, is my position, but I know not your position.

Now we could corral these men up in prisons, and keep them away from the general populace. And if this is true, I am anxious to know, because in that case I should be trying to get myself in some sort of prison. (Of course there could be no public bathing in such a prison, either, and for the same reasons. These people must not be allowed near each other.)

Now that would be a way to solve the problem, but something tells me very clearly that that is immoral too.

But there is another problem. The Greeks were wise when they said that a man is generally called the lover of those things he loves, and a homosexual is a lover of men. Christians believe, I think, that people should be discouraged, and discourage themselves, from becoming lovers of men, but they must admit that there are such things as lovers of men, as I believe Mark was telling us. The problem is this: how are going to convince a person who loves something, that the thing he loves is not lovable? A man who loves men sees what is beautiful in men, and to see what is beautiful about a thing, is good, and it is natural to want to see beautiful things. The problem is that with this love of beauty, comes a sexual desire, and we are in disagreement as to whether the sexual desire is a good thing.

Why then can we not have this compromise? Let us admit, to the lovers of men, that men are indeed beautiful, and worthy of being loved, but tell them that it is not evident, whether it is permissible for one man to love another man?

And yet it seems I have contradicted myself, when I wanted to say that men are lovable, but not to be loved. Unless there are different ways of loving a thing, and some are permissible, and others are not.

The truth is, I do not think there is anything in natural reason that says one man should not love another man. But I trust natural reason more than I trust divine reason, because divine reason does not belong to me.

Unless you think it follows from natural reason, as I suppose you must, that the Bible is a revelation?

Unless there are different ways of loving a thing, and some are permissible, and others are not.

If you know enough of the ancient Greeks and Romans to know they had public baths, then you know that they managed to have more than one word for "love"-- and anyone who spends more than a minute thinking about the various ways to "love" knows that it's totally acceptable for me to love my daughter as a mother to her child, but totally NOT acceptable for my father to love me as he loves my mother.

Likewise, loving my brothers in Christ should NOT be mistaken for the way I love my husband.

@Mark: If you can see where I am going, I do not mind if you tell me ... The Greeks were wise when they said that a man is generally called the lover of those things he loves ... I do not think there is anything in natural reason that says one man should not love another man.

Where you're headed is into a argument that you aren't advocating at the same time pedophilia, which you'll likely do by invoking the idea of consent.

@Foxfier: Philosophy does have something to do with my reproductive organs, I think, because my sexual desires get in the way of other desires, and I must take counsel as to how I can keep these desires from ruling my life.

People do take counsel about these sorts of things. Even liberals. Now I do not know if I am a liberal, but I have certainly lived around liberals. (I think that if I had lived around more conservatives, I would also not be able to hate conservatives. But it is a goal of mine never to to hate the people I live around, in any respect. Perhaps I should distinguish anger and hate, but I am wary even of anger. Because when I am angry at people, I do things to them that are not respectable. Thank God I have never done anything regrettable.

And yet I think we have to find a way to be angry at people we think are bad, without doing things to them that are regrettable.

@Mark: If I do not say mean things to you, I would like to know why you are allowed to say mean things to me. It does not seem reasonable. I grant you can say true things to me, on the other hand. But it is better I think not to say bad things about a person, unless we are sure they are true, and we must grant that if they are not true, we have done something bad. So I do not know whether you have done something bad, in saying that this is "sophistic navel-gazing", but because those words, when uttered, do no imply that the person who utters them believes that the person he utters them to are good, but carry the strong implication that the person who utters them believes the person he utters them to is bad, you have said that I am bad. And I do not object to being called bad, if you would simply say that I am bad, because I weary of all the ways in which a person can be called bad. I do not see the difference between calling someone bad and calling him names and calling him by all the bad names he has. Somehow I have stook by this precept from my education, that it is bad to call people names, and so I must say that unless I am wrong about this, I think that you just did something bad.

I believe pedophilia is wrong, but I am not sure why I believe this. I would say it is because I would not have wanted someone to do that to me, as a child. (Though I think I can imagine it is possible for a child to want such a thing.)

What you call "sophistic navel gazing" I call by other names which are good names. So you are opening up another disagreement between us, I suppose, as to what is and is not good?

Or maybe you should tell me what you mean by "sophistic navel-gazing"? For instance, when I ask you what you mean by that phrase, do you call that "sophistic navel-gazing"? And if so, what is bad about it?

(We all suffer emotions when we talk to people, and I must admit having some difficulty keeping emotions from getting in the way of thinking clearly. But I try to as best as I can, and I am inclined to call that brave.)

Hey, folks: The commentator calling himself "firezdog" has trouble not commenting too much, too personally, and too weirdly. For the most part, I'm going to ignore him. I'm not interested in his personal musings, and I don't want them taking over my threads. Alex (firezdog)--please control your tendency to over-comment and to make everything all about you.

Mark: Actually, no, the issue for me is whether homosexuals should be, as much as lies reasonably within the purview of recruiters, officers, etc., allowed to serve in the military at all. I _oppose_ DADT. I think those screening for military service _should_ ask, that prospective recruits should answer truthfully, and that homosexuals should be excluded. I think those now known or discovered to be homosexuals should be discharged. It might well be overly cumbersome to put in place now screening questions for those already in the military simply because of time and numbers, but that is itself unfortunate and is a simple accident of the poor policy we've had in place for about twenty years. This isn't about serving openly. It's about whether we should try to discriminate. DADT is not the conservative position. If wise public policy were followed, the only way a homosexual person will get into the military is by lying, which hopefully we will all agree would be wrong.

Mark, I do appreciate your willingness to say unpopular things about legitimate revulsion towards homosexual acts, etc. That's all good, and I don't want you to think I'm picking on you by picking up on the one area where we might disagree. It's just that I think conservatives need to be willing to take the further step of saying that there are some professions and some situations where people with conflicted sexual feelings such as you describe *do not belong* if we can, as a matter of ordinary policy, screen them out.

As I've said, I think this is also true of the priesthood. To put it starkly, in some professions and situations, the policy should be that only people with healthy, normal sexuality need apply.

@Lydia: But this does concern me, because I'm a homosexual, and we have a disagreement as to how I should behave. I would like to know how you think people who call themselves homosexuals should behave.

They should refrain from all homosexual acts and stay away from situations of temptation to such thoughts. They should seek help from God. They should not go on the Internet seeking sympathy from the entire world for their problem, making unwanted revelations about their feelings of "love" for men, defending those feelings as something good, and trying to pressure others to accept their orientation as something other than abnormal. I trust the spirit and letter of this is understood.

This post is not about how you should behave, Alex. It's about what public policy should be on homosexuals in the military. I would like to think you could maintain that distinction and will expect you to do so on my thread.

@Foxfier: I must admit I sometimes find it hard to tell when I am being honest and when I am not. And if I am a bad dance partner, I admit I was never good at dancing, and I am a slow learner. But if we can be patient with each other, as I stumble, it is possible that I will improve.

@Lydia: I suppose politics only concerns me when it touches me, but I find it confusing whenever the conversation turns to things I do not know about, and I admit that there are many aspects of the current political struggle (since there does seem to be some sort of a struggle among people with opposing views, though it is not a war, or at least, it is not a civil war, I hope) that I do not understand, because I have been too lazy to watch them. But it is very depressing to watch people argue, and even more depressing to be in an argument!

I am still a youth, and I have neither yet prosecuted anyone in the law courts, nor myself been prosecuted. So the world of men is something I know only from movies, books, and the shelter of those places where people go to read.

This Act may be cited as the `Don't Ask, Don't Tell Repeal Act of 2010'...

(f) Treatment of 1993 Policy-

(1) TITLE 10- Upon the effective date established by subsection (b), chapter 37 of title 10, United States Code, is amended--

(A) by striking section 654; and

(B) in the table of sections at the beginning of such chapter, by striking the item relating to section 654.

(2) CONFORMING AMENDMENT- Upon the effective date established by subsection (b), section 571 of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 1994 (10 U.S.C. 654 note) is amended by striking subsections (b), (c), and (d)."

No, Al, I completely disagree, and in fact, as the ban on homosexuals in the military was carried out earlier, evidence I have received from former service members indicates that they were asked all manner of questions at the recruitment stage intended to discover whether they were homosexual. The policy states:

The presence in the armed forces of persons who demonstrate a propensity or intent to engage in homosexual acts would create an unacceptable risk to the high standards of morale, good order and discipline, and unit cohesion that are the essence of military capability.

Acting in accordance with that would quite understandably involve, and did involve, trying at the recruitment stage to avoid admitting people who have a "propensity" to engage in homosexual acts.

"Separation" concerns people who have already managed to make it into the armed forces. Moreover, one of the possible causes for separation is the person's "making a statement" that he is homosexual, and nothing in the policy excludes _eliciting_ such a statement by asking a question. The whole point of DADT was supposed to be that you were *careful not to ask*. There's nothing like that here whatsoever.

Lydia this is from the law that was passed in 2003 (H.R. 2401 section 574 (d). It is clear that the Congress intended a 'don't ask" policy so asserting that Clinton was making things up is clearly wrong. The SecDef could have issued a finding re-instituting questioning but that is irrelevant to the point you and Auster are trying to make.

" (d) SENSE OF CONGRESS- It is the sense of Congress that--

(1) the suspension of questioning concerning homosexuality as part of the processing of individuals for accession into the Armed Forces under the interim policy of January 29, 1993, should be continued, but the Secretary of Defense may reinstate that questioning with such questions or such revised questions as he considers appropriate if the Secretary determines that it is necessary to do so in order to effectuate the policy set forth in section 654 of title 10, United States Code, as added by subsection (a); and

(2) the Secretary of Defense should consider issuing guidance governing the circumstances under which members of the Armed Forces questioned about homosexuality for administrative purposes should be afforded warnings similar to the warnings under section 831(b) of title 10, United States Code (article 31(b) of the Uniform Code of Military Justice)."

You are quoting from (a) of the current law which are the congressional findings. The actual law is under (b) which is termed "policy". A close reading of (b) makes it clear that some overt action by the service member is necessary.

If we couple that with the "sense of the Congress" in the 2003 law it is clear that DADT is an accurate representation of the law passed by the Congress in 2003 and signed by President Clinton.

That either Clinton's or Bush's Sec Def could have re-instituted "asking" may be a legitimate beef on the part of social conservatives but it is clear that your claim that there never was a DADT law is clearly wrong.

As I've said, I think this is also true of the priesthood. To put it starkly, in some professions and situations, the policy should be that only people with healthy, normal sexuality need apply.

Lydia, I agree, and I don't feel picked on at all. I opposed DADT also, I was just pointing out the significance of a public declaration and the reality that in the closet gays have served before DADT, and I'm not sure the Marines stayed awake at night worrying about the inner life of their soldiers before the Clinton era.

Um, Al, Clinton was not President in 2003. He certainly did make up the DADT policy after he was stymied by the 1993 law. The "sense of Congress" statement you quote refers to the policy Clinton put in place and does _not_ refer to the intent of Congress in the original law but to an acquiescence in the Clinton-era executive policy as of 2003 after ten years of the Clinton policy.

And, yes, it is a beef that Bush did not instruct his Sec. of Def. to reinstitute questioning.

And, btw, the very reference to a "suspension" of questioning and to "reinstituting" questioning indicates that questioning used to be the norm.

And, no, section b (which I did read) does not in any way, shape, or form rule out questioning which would elicit the "overt action" of stating that one is homosexual and does not, in any event, concern the process of recruitment in the first instance.

I'm not sure the Marines stayed awake at night worrying about the inner life of their soldiers before the Clinton era.

Well, Mark, I don't know about staying awake at night, but I would submit that insofar as it was the usual previous military policy to take active steps to exclude homosexuals (which was precisely what Clinton was _changing_), there was no need to think twice about the matter once you were in the military unless someone gave you reason to be suspicious.

By the way, Al, I don't know about you, because I don't know how old you are, but I _remember for myself_ Bill Clinton's instituting the DADT policy, on his own authority, after not getting what he wanted from Congress in the actual law. I remember hearing his speech on the news in which he announced it.

Lydia, my apologies for writing 2003 when I meant 1993 which was clear from the rest of the comment as well as the link should you have followed it, which you should have. the actual text from the 1993 law makes it clear that DADT was the policy. The DA part of the policy has been in effect since 1/29/93. All recruits were to be informed of the policy at least twice. Any personal questioning by recruiters was out of policy.

Auster appears to have taken at face value a comment that consists of nit picking the failure of the law I referenced to use the exact terminology "DADT". This is wierd beyond belief. This is from the paper she used.

"The only “compromise” involved allowed Bill Clinton to continue his January 1993 policy of not asking “the question” about homosexuality that used to be on induction forms."

Which is a reference to the "Sense of the Congress" section.

"Asking" as a policy ceased in January of 1993 while stating one as gay or engaging in homosexual acts (and getting caught) remained grounds for dismissal. The politicians came up with a snappy catch phrase. You all are straining at a gnat.

"By the way, Al, I don't know about you, because I don't know how old you are, but I _remember for myself_ Bill Clinton's instituting the DADT policy, on his own authority, after not getting what he wanted from Congress in the actual law. I remember hearing his speech on the news in which he announced it."

We need to see the speech. If you heard it on the news, all you heard was a sound bite and some reporting which can't be considered dispositive. I'll see if I can find the speech.

The consensus on this thread seems to be to not engage your questions, but I wanted to offer just a word on this:

"The truth is, I do not think there is anything in natural reason that says one man should not love another man. But I trust natural reason more than I trust divine reason, because divine reason does not belong to me."

You've mentioned Socrates. Are you aware that Socrates seemed to take it as apparent by natural reason that homosexual acts are immoral? This is apparent in Xenophon's Memorabilia and in numerous places in Plato, if one reads carefully.

There's a thorough and good discussion of this subject and about why in general uncorrupted natural reason would frown on homosexuality in Leo Strauss' commentary on Plato's Symposium, if anyone's interested.

Tweet--whistle from the ref. No side debates about Socrates' view of homosexual acts will be tolerated. Just as a warning for future reference.

Al, that link has timed out.

I take it from your reference to "dicta" that even if/though the "sense of Congress" language was indeed included in 1993, this does not have the binding force of law. That is, indeed, a good point. It's also worth noting that even if that language was included as dicta (not as part of the law selbst, the language of which clearly would tend strongly in the other direction and would encourage asking questions to exclude those with "propensities") in mid-1993 it was so because Clinton had, on his own recognizance, told his military people to stop "asking the question" in January of that year, without the slightest legal pretext. This by your own admission. Hence the reference to an existing, extralegal "policy" prior to the law. This is even if it was there in mid-93. But if it was, that is interesting info. and is news to me, and I appreciate it. I'm still waiting to get clear on that, though.

Of course, he's very pleased with it. It's the movement of the arc of justice.

I'll update the main post if and when I'm convinced that the "sense of Congress" dictum was in the 1993 law.

However, no, that isn't just nit-picking because it "didn't use the phrase DADT." It would still be true in that case that it wasn't a DADT law, because taking everything into account, the executive would still have it in his power to *ask the question*. It's a confusingly worded dictum anyway (this policy "should continue" but it's up to the Sec. of Def. to change it at any time?). If DADT were "the law" that would meant that Bush could not have instituted an outright ban on the power of his administration alone, which he could. Moreover, yes, it most certainly was something that Clinton "made up" even if the gap between his making it up and Congress's making this odd (and certainly unfortunate) gesture toward it was half a year--the "policy" was Clinton's baby originally. Oh, and legislative history is also relevant: Congress rejected actual DADT amendments to the law which some Democrats wanted and which obviously Clinton would have preferred, given that he'd already instituted the policy on his own authority.

All of this will go in an update if I'm convinced that the "sense of Congress" paragraph was included with the 1993 law.

al, don't give up. I think you need another thousand links, but you can do it.
Have you considered publishing a Users Guide to Links, subtitled, Crutches for the Insecure. No, that won't do. How about "Links for the Unprincipled"? Maybe "Crush Them with Links", "Wasting Time With Links", "A Life Spent With Links", "Link Them To Death", "Don't Think, Link".
There may be a fortune to be made there al, and you can give it all to the DNC, or maybe the New Black Panthers Legal Defense Fund.
Go for it.

William, I understand that as a good conservative you will be more concerned with ideological correctness than the truth on any given issue. We liberals, not being ideological, are more concerned with what actually happens.

Lydia, I think the best reading of the whole section in the 1993 law is that "don't tell" is mandated under law and "don't ask" is allowable policy. While the law makes it clear that homosexuality is incompatible with military service, it also has enough wiggle room to allow such service. Taking the question off the enlistment forms removed the possibility of perjury.

The "Sense" section is part of the law that was passed and signed. The 103rd was a Democratic Congress and Sam Nunn likely gave Clinton a policy fig leaf while precluding his ability to use an EO.

William, it doesn't bother me at all and I don't understand why it bothers you. In a few years this whole fuss is going to look silly.

I think what makes this conversation difficult for me is that I call things bad which you call good, and vice versa. That is true, and does not I think in itself lead to relativism. But whenever you call something bad that I call good, I get angry. I do not intend to become angry, but I do -- because I see a disagreement. And each person says so many things with which I disagree, that I become over-excited, and say things I would not want to say.

But is there a way somehow for a person to call as few things bad that the other person calls good as possible -- not so that we can with-hold from making moral judgments, but so that we can focus on a few moral judgments and argue about those?

Or here's my honesty: I'm interested in discussing abstract ethics here, but I get the sense you guys are trying always to go back to concrete cases. And I know nothing about the concrete cases (hence you say, in frustration, "Read what we're saying Alex!").

But that's my analysis of the situation, and I'm giving it because, like you, I hope, I always am trying to figure out what's going on.

I also notice that you think I'm making arguments, still, that I don't intend to make. You think that you can guess the way I'm going to think, and quite frankly, I am not sure if you can. In any event, I can't guess the direction of going. I'm not coming here like a high school debater, trying to win an argument at all costs, but I'm also not going to believe something you tell me, if I think it's false. That seems reasonable to me. Is it reasonable?

"Honesty" -- well I call it that. I do not think that what I call honesty is what you call honesty, though. That's why it's confusing to use the word "honesty" -- it makes it seem as if we agree, when we do not. But we should not try to exaggerate our disagreements either! So how do you steer the middle course?

The problem is a person falls into rhetoric quite naturally, I think. I do not know when what I say is interpreted rhetorically, either. But I am not trying to be rhetorical, because I think rhetoric is evil.

"The problem is a person falls into rhetoric quite naturally, I think. I do not know when what I say is interpreted rhetorically, either. But I am not trying to be rhetorical, because I think rhetoric is evil."

Aaaaarrrrrggggghhhhh!!!! screamed the teacher of rhetoric, tearing her hair out by the roots in helpless rage . . .

Alex, bag it. Stop making the meta-comments about yourself, your feelings, what you're trying to do, etc., etc., or I will start deleting them. I'M NOT INTERESTED.

Al, I think what you have said to Bill about ideological correctness vs. truth is fairly ridiculous. After all, if it is _wrong_ for the army to force straights to shower with homosexuals, then it's _true_ that it's _wrong_. So that shot about "ideological correctness" was just a flourish. It was quite legitimate for him to ask you what you think of the policy now being put into place.

I tend to agree with you that if the "sense of Congress" paragraph was included as early as 1993, then "Don't ask" was being permitted, while, of course, "don't tell" was law. I also agree that this was a fig-leaf to Clinton, since he had gone ahead and started the "don't ask" policy all on his own and then failed to get Congress really on-board with it. In this way he could say that he was not _absolutely forbidden_ by the law to discontinue asking, while at the same time "don't ask" was not the law, and either he or (more importantly) Bush could have reinstated asking at any time.

I disapprove heartily, and I think it does make a difference to some of the things I said in the original post. For example, the term "defiance" would in that case only apply to the earlier portion of the year 1993.

I continue to maintain that "don't ask" is highly incongruous with the actual text of the law. If it is contrary to good cohesion, etc., for people with even a propensity to commit homosexual acts to be in the military, then it makes obvious sense to try to find out if someone has such a propensity as part of the recruitment process. This, presumably, is why Congress rejected actual DADT amendments to the law itself.

I would also add, what I think most of us know, that DADT was never implemented in full good faith. When you google "January 1993" and other terms connected with homosexuals in the military, one thing you come up with is a lot of hits concerning one (I believe female) serviceman who _announced_ that she was lesbian early in 1993 in an attempt to see if she would be discharged. I believe she was not discharged, though I haven't had time to research this. Nor was Bradley Manning discharged on the basis of his sexuality, even though his homosexuality was known. I haven't done enough research to find out how many cases of this kind there were, but I do not believe Clinton ever intended actually to implement DADT as it was understood by the public. It was always intended, I believe, as fairly transparent cover for winking at known homosexuals in the military. Hence we had a situation leading into the recent vote in which we were being told about all these brave homosexuals already serving in the military. The obvious question was, if DADT had really been implemented, *how did we know these people existed*?

The bad faith of DADT is, I believe, part of what disgusted conservatives (I know it disgusted me) and made it extremely difficult to rouse energy to defend or maintain _that_ policy as the status quo.

There were a number of court cases in the 1980s as this issue percolated through the body politic. It's important to understand that Clinton wasn't doing anything illegal, underhanded, or wrong. He campaigned on removing the restriction and once elected proceeded to direct the drafting of a policy and executive order to do just that. This was within his powers as CIC. It was also within the rights of the Congress to preempt an EO with a law which is what they proceeded to do.

Motivations, of course differ, ranging from the abhorrence and moral outrage from folks like you through concerns over implementation to political cynicism. Note that the law basically says that homosexuality is incompatible with military service unless the president/SecDef says it is.

" (e) RULE OF CONSTRUCTION- Nothing in subsection (b) shall be construed to require that a member of the armed forces be processed for separation from the armed forces when a determination is made in accordance with regulations prescribed by the Secretary of Defense that--

`(1) the member engaged in conduct or made statements for the purpose of avoiding or terminating military service; and

`(2) separation of the member would not be in the best interest of the armed forces."

Anyway, times are changing and we will soon find out who is correct. What if this turns out to be no big deal?

Completely aside from questions of privacy and acceptance, allowing open homosexual behavior in the military will clearly have a deleterious effect on military effectiveness, one that (unlike racial integration) cannot be overcome with experience, education or policy. Allowing homosexual relations among servicemembers introduces eros into relationships that only work when they are based on philia and agape. This will tarnish every decision and action, from who gets assigned to chip paint to who walks point on infantry patrols.

This has been the case with broadening the role of women in the service, but will be even worse for at least two reasons, first because there are still prohibitions on women serving in certain combat roles, and second because male homosexual activity is vastly more promiscuous and aggressive than that of heterosexuals.

Speaking as a serviceman with over 18 years of Active and Reserve service, I can say that, just as with the inclusion of women, the military will follow orders and declare homosexual inclusion a success, no matter what the actual evidence indicates. Maybe it will only make the military 5% less effective. Five percent worse in Vietnam would have meant around 2,650 more men dead. Maybe that's worth it to you.

Oh yes al the ''times are changing''. Progress is just codename for destruction to liberals. Women and blacks and latinos are always on the prowl about equality, human rights/civil rights and this has made the American military decline. You know why you don't hear why it's a big deal? Discrimination lawsuits (liberalism doing it's social experiment) plus the brainwashed individuals who ignore the shortcomings of these policies. You will not notice the destruction until the very end. An example of ''times are changing'' mantra is that whites will be a minority in America by 2050 and the liberals are ecstatic about it!

@Gina: I think you are right that people call good bad and bad good. That's at the heart of the whole dispute between liberals and conservatives. I call homosexuality good, but using obscure language, and then you call homosexuality bad, but using obscure language. The language confuses us and we see right past each other. "He just called something good, bad. He must not understand the meaning of the word "good". He must be too stupid to understand the meaning of the word "good"." I think that's what happens when people who disagree with each other talk to one another. Is that right?

But I agree with people who call themselves Christians, when you they that certain things really are good, and certain things really are bad -- if I know what that means. I just don't think the same things are good, as you do. So now, if you'll have me, I have to work with you to try and see if the things I think are good really are good. Because believing that something is good, is bad, makes a person miserable (and vice versa).

But this is the difficulty: I do not think that believing that certain things really are good, is yet believing that Jesus Christ is my personal savior. And so if believing that this Jesus is my personal savior, means believing that certain things are good and certain things are bad, then of course, if I do not believe Jesus Christ is my savior, I am going to believe that all sorts of things are good, which you believe are bad.

But we have to live in the same country together, so how do we do that? I think it is absolutely wrong for people who disagree with me to kill me because of that, and I think it is absolutely wrong for me to kill people whom I disagree with. I pray that no one will ever convince me that bad things are good and good things are bad, also. But I think it is a lesser evil, allowing myself to be persuaded that good things are bad and bad things are good, than it is to kill someone. (You must not think I am mad for uttering these things, because we have to talk about killing people, and whether it is right or wrong, as a matter of ethics!)

So since I disagree with you and it is forbidden and unholy for me to kill you, how am I going to settle this dispute with you? I could of course go and live somewhere else, which is what I have done, but then we must simply pray, that there is enough space for everybody who disagrees with each other to believe what he believes to be good is good in peace. And that does not seem to me to be a very good solution to the problem, either.

For the record, I don't object to the links Al has provided here. I've found the information interesting. I do, however, think he has a tendency not to see the forest for the trees.

I also think he was incorrect in his interpretation when he called the statement that there was no DADT law "weird beyond belief." He later agreed that, indeed, "don't ask" was never the law (which, of course, is what it would mean inter alia for DADT to be the law), without seeming to realize that this means that there was never an actual DADT law, just as Auster and I et. al. said.

As so often happens, I appreciate Al's energy and the information he brings to the discussion, and I've learned from them, but I think his interpretations, or some of them, are somewhat tendentious.

@Lydia: What do you mean DADT was never a law? Didn't it get signed into the legislature? Or I imagine someone said something to that effect, wrote it down, and published it to some group of people or other as a rule they were to follow. Is that wrong?

Ignoring the moral and philosophical issues for a moment, since you brought up the issue of "military effectiveness", I'm curious what you think about the Israelis? It is my understanding that they allow open homosexuals to serve but individual commanders can exclude them from certain units if they feel the homosexual individuals are disruptive to unit cohesion. Out of all the Western military forces, I consider the Israeli armed forces an effective military force, but perhaps you think otherwise and/or think this policy of theirs has diminished their military effectiveness?

I can't speak to what she means; but AFAIK DADT was never a law. The just-repealed 1993 law (which had been passed by a veto-proof majority of a Democratically-controlled Congress) didn't establish DADT: it clarified - against the policy of the Clinton administration - that it is (or was, up until the repeal just days ago) flat-out illegal for homosexuals to join the military.

Every homosexual who enlisted since 1993 did so illegally. That the Executives - Clinton, Bush, and Obama - declined to enforce the law through active investigation, doesn't mean that it was legal for homosexuals to join as long as they stayed in the closet. It wasn't, again AFAIK.

The just-repealed 1993 law said that homosexuals didn't belong in the military and that people should be discharged if they indicated that they were homosexual, unless some exception was made in an individual case.

The text of the law left it completely open for *questions to be asked* about whether a person was homosexual. Hence, "don't ask" was not the law. It was not part of the law. The Department of Defense was not required by a law, written by the legislature, not to ask about the sexuality of people coming into the military.

Hence, DADT was not the law.

At some point (Al says at that very time in mid-1993, and he may be right, but I still haven't nailed this down) Congress included a non-binding "sense of Congress" paragraph that said that the Secretary of Defense--that is, the executive branch--was permitted either not to ask about sexuality or else to reinstate the former policy of asking about sexuality. In other words, Clinton was (to the extent that this non-binding "sense of Congress" paragraph has any relevance) permitted by this non-binding paragraph to continue the policy he had begun, without legal pretext originally, of not asking.

However, that was mere permission. It did not establish "don't ask" as required. It left the whole thing up to the executive. Bush, for example, could have reinstituted asking by instructing his Secretary of Defense to do so and having the order passed down the line to recruitment. This would *not have required legislative action*.

Hence, once again, the "don't ask" part was never the law.

I don't know how to be any clearer.

FYI: Policies promulgated by the executive branch as part of the President's decision as to what to have military recruiters do, which can be changed at any time, are not laws.

What do you mean by the word "homosexual"? I am not certain what I mean by it. If we use this term, instead of saying, man who loves men, we will get confused. But if we say man who loves men, then I do not believe a law that states: "Men who love men cannot join the army." is a true law.

(I think we should call laws true and false. A true law really is a law, whereas a false law is just called a law.)

Ignoring the moral and philosophical issues for a moment, since you brought up the issue of "military effectiveness", I'm curious what you think about the Israelis? It is my understanding that they allow open homosexuals to serve but individual commanders can exclude them from certain units if they feel the homosexual individuals are disruptive to unit cohesion.

Assuming, for the sake of argument, that by some form of indoctrination the nature of heterosexual men could be so completely suppressed or transformed that military effectiveness would not be compromised by the constant presence of open homosexuals, I can only say: What a criminal and inhuman thing to do to men! Who wants to be a party to this?

Step2, you were right. It was one of those times when you and I were in perfect agreement (these don't come often).

Alex: SHUT UP! The only reason I'm leaving up your last comment is because of Step2's followup. After this, I'm going to start deleting you for such ramblings. If this isn't clear enough, I don't know what is.

Jeff C., I don't know what the deal is with the Israelis, but it may be the homosexuals who are suppressed, if you know what I mean. Not that that would solve all the problems, in any event, but it would help. It certainly isn't going to happen here.

"In other words, Clinton was (to the extent that this non-binding "sense of Congress" paragraph has any relevance) permitted by this non-binding paragraph to continue the policy he had begun, without legal pretext originally, of not asking."

The National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 1994 was signed on 11/30/1993 and became Public Law No: 103-160. It included the new add on to Title 10 and the Sense of the Congress section.

As best I can tell, prior to the passage of this law the controlling authority on homosexuality in the military was DOD DlRECTlVE 1332.14 - Jan. 28, 1982 (part1, section H).

Prior to the passage of PL 103-160, on July 19, 1993, SecDef Les Aspin issued a memorandum to the JCS instituting the Don't Ask regulation while maintaining the conduct requirements in 1332.14 of Jan. 28, 1982.

The new law resulted in a new iteration of 1332.14 as well as of Directive 1304.26 on December 21, 1993 with additional changes on march 4, 1994 which dealt with don't Ask.

President Clinton, as CIC, was legally justified in changing this policy with an Executive Order until 11/30/93. When he began the process with his directive to SecDef Les Aspin in January of 1993 he was within his full legal rights. I don't get where this insistence that Clinton was doing something "without legal pretext" comes from. Until Congress, in order to preempt him, codified the policy, it was his to change at will.

What I find weird is the attempt to make a policy/law distinction more meaningful than it is. Besides, it doesn't matter if Don't Ask was policy and Don't Tell was law because it's all going bye, bye. The relevant section of Title 10 is repealed rendering Don't Ask moot.

You raise a good point, one that highlights some of the difficulty in measuring this sort of matter - almost no single factor makes or breaks a military. For example, someone opposed to racial integration could make the argument that a segregated US military was able to defeat the Axis in WWII, but an integrated military was only able to fight tiny North Korea to stalemate. This comparison is clearly ridiculous, as the other strategic and logistical issues in play would dwarf racial integration in any balanced analysis.

Israel's military is well-resourced, has a very tight set of threats on which to focus and has the freedom to train intensely because the civilian population is well aware of the imminent threats they face. With that going for them, they could probably restrict enlistment to only gay, left-handed Wiccans and still be a potent force. My point, though, is to ask how much better they would be without the hindrances imposed by open homosexual relationships in the ranks? How many less men dead - because that's the final price tag.

Some scattered thoughts:
- Combat units can decline homosexuals, so there's at least some recognition that there's a cost.
- This policy in Israel is recent (1990's), and Israel hasn't fought a major war in that time frame (the 2006 Lebanon "War" lasted only 34 days).
- Because even the Israeli military is subject to political pressures, there could be rampant problems with this policy and they would not be reported as systemic faults, but as isolated incidents, if at all.
- This essay expresses my thesis better than I can.

Respectabiggle -
nation size is also important; I've been told by folks who live in Israel that "most" soldiers are able to go home every night, which isn't a situation we have, even for folks state-side.

"Now, the elephant in the room here is the simple matter of physical privacy and modesty. Why are males not (yet) made to shower with females in the military? "

I think many heterosexual males will not put up much of a fight against having to shower with females. I'm sure many will appreciate the effort to conserve sparse water and space on military bases and will readily embrace such conservation of resources on behalf of the good taxpayers of the US. But the reason this doesn't happen is many women would rightly feel threatened by such a policy. Here the issue isn't sexual attraction but simply power. Males are more powerful physically than females and more likely to sexually assault them, males showering with females intrudes on female's space. You should appreciate this reasoning as it applies two strategies the right likes. There's profiling (most males do not sexually attack women, but overwhelmingly most sexual assaults on women are by men and women sexually attacking men is very rare). And then there's the focus on biological differences between the genders (men are typically stronger and more physically aggressive than women leading an intimate communal shower policy to be problematic).

Now I, like most people, personally don't like communal showers and bathrooms and it has nothing to do with the knowledge that someone may be sexually attracted to me. In public, though, my dislike of communal facilities is not enough that I'd demand stores have individual bathrooms nor would I pay extra to belong to a gym that set up some type of individualized shower/bathroom/locker thing so I do 'get over it'.

"Bush's DOD could have told us that the line to be held was not the liberal DADT, invented by Bill Clinton, but was the actual policy on the books: Homosexuals do not have a place in the military, and there are good reasons for this."

Except there isn't. Not that showers are an incredible expense in terms of military operations but the only 'reason' you presented is that maybe some members might not want to shower with others they think are gay. A more revealing fact is actual behavior on the ground. You're right that DADT wasn't technically a 'new law'. It was just a change in the way the existing law was going to be enforced, hence the many cases where soldiers weren't asked, didn't tell but still got kicked out. But while DADT actually saw more soldiers expelled from the military, cases actually went down as we went to war in Iraq and Afghanistan. Cases are generally initiated near the bottom of the chain of command. Why did this happen? Because going into combat most leaders wanted all their men and saw no problem with gay members unless they were doing something disruptive. If the people whose actual lives depended on 'readiness' honestly saw gays as inhibiting it, they would have stepped up DADT cases before going into combat to 'clean' their squads of gays as much as possible.

So let's clear up what the real problem was. It wasn't that the Bush admin. didn't reverse Clinton as much as it was that the conservative argument was built on a lie to begin with. It had nothing to do with military rediness but everything to do with social engineering just as the opposition to racial integration under Truman had to do with social engineering. Segregationists were correct in that by integrating the armed forces, the social support for segregation would be undermined. Young men bonding with other men with no regard to race would find it difficult to simply return to taking the segregation idea seriously when their service ended. Hence segregationists pretended that their only concern was protecting military readiness against 'social engineers' but the truth was the opposite. If integration caused a diaster in terms of readiness segregationists would have been very happy. It would have been a small price to pay to produce a demonstration of the wisdom of their worldview to larger society. They opposed integration then not because it wouldn't work but because it would. The military would integrate and either be just as good as it was before or better and those supporting segregation would have another argument against their view. By opposing integration they were not trying to protect the military but trying to practice social engineering by using the military to reinforce the segregationist mindset in young men.

And that's what its really about here. You don't like society accepting gays hence you're trying to preserve a rule which has proven a total failure in terms of military effectiveness but provides at least a slim amount of social engineering against larger acceptance of gays in society. If we had some law on the books that gays couldn't be toll takers or librarians I don't think you'd hesitate for a moment to produce thousand word essays on why toll roads or libraries just can't serve their essential functions if known gays were there.

BTW, a lot of guys would object to being forced to shower with women. In that, you really are being sexist-- and you clearly don't know many female sailors, or you's know women do sexually assault men, even if it's not in as high of numbers. Reactions like yours are why they don't file complaints.
"Oh, sailor so-and-so grabbed your junk? Most action you've seen in five months! Why are you complaining?"

Different showers are not an absolute necessity but a luxury that we can afford. Men and women can shower together if they absolutely had too and it's possible to imagine cases where this might even be a military necessity (say being hit by a chemical weapon of some sort in a battlefield where water is in very short supply). In fact it has happened in other cultures in other historical periods (for example, Irish peasents did often bath within easy eyeshot of each other, one reason Irish priests developed a reputation for being strict was partly out of necessity as 'occassions for sin' shall we say were more common than one would think). If men and women had to shower together we'd have to compensate in other ways for the threat of sexual assault and the power differential between men and women. The issue of sexual attraction in itself ("I don't want to be near someone who may find me attractive") I think is overblown. It is not like men do not find women sexually attractive if they are not nude and it is not like women do not know this already...yet most of us are able find ways to work around this.

Thanks for getting back to me, I appreciate the thoughts and I suspect you are right to suggest that ultimately the Israelis are suffering some form of effectiveness reduction thanks to their policy. Also, thanks to that link to Mac Owens -- I love his writing and missed that earlier essay by him (although I've read some more recently ones by him denouncing the end of the ban).

Jeff C.,

We are in 100% agreement -- perhaps that is why liberals are ultimately wrong in their attempt to separate "is" from "ought":

Boonton, on the matter of privacy, modesty, and keeping sexual feelings and interactions out of the army you are so messed up that you are not worth talking to. If men and women were being made to shower together on the battlefield, this would just be yet another obvious argument against having women on the battlefield!

On this...

You don't like society accepting gays hence you're trying to preserve a rule which has proven a total failure in terms of military effectiveness

I have no idea what you think you're talking about. *Keeping gays out of the military* (which, not DADT, is the policy I actually defend) was bad for military effectiveness? Oh, do tell: What's the evidence that we needed homosexuals in the military to improve military effectiveness?

"And... yeah, the whole "being gay is just like being black" thing is old, wrong and really insulting."

Actually it's less 'gay = black' and more 'opposing getting rid of DADT = opposing Truman's integration order'. Both are making/made dishonest arguments about 'military readiness' when the real agenda is using the military for conservative social engineering.

"Boonton, on the matter of privacy, modesty, and keeping sexual feelings and interactions out of the army you are so messed up that you are not worth talking to. If men and women were being made to shower together on the battlefield, this would just be yet another obvious argument against having women on the battlefield"

Never said it wasn't an argument for not having women on the battlefield. Even so, men and women having to share a communal shower is something that may have to happen under certain extreme conditions and has happened under extreme conditions in human history. All I said is if it had to happen other forces would have to compensate to address the losses of privacy, modesty and control of sexual feelings/interactions. I'm not worth talking too if you're more interested in getting pats on the back than learning if your reasoning or logic is flawed. That's your personal issue to address.

You are basically agreeing with me in terms of gays and showers. You identify 3 reasons that make communal showers problematic. Privacy, modesty and sexual feelings/interactions. In cases of different sex showers, all three issues can be said to be in the 'red zone'. Even if there's no mutual sexual attraction, it is, for example, a big privacy issue for a woman to be naked in front of a man and I'll grant vice versa. In same sex showers these issues drop dramatically but they are still there. As a rule, for example, I don't really make a point of showering with other men and would rather shower by myself but if I'm at a gym or something I'll do the communal shower rather than demand a private one. But just to point out 2 of the 3 issues are there even without gays....in the military though you sometimes have to just deal with it (and sometimes, clearly many in the military live in their own housing or are working in areas that do not require communal showers).

So out of 3 issues, 2/3 are not relevant with gays. If my sense of privacy and modesty is that I can tolerate a communal shower with members of the same gender then no there is no need for a 2nd set of showers for gays only. On the 3rd issue the key difference is that in a communal shower with men and women you have the fact that a super majority of men and a super majority of women will be sexually attracted to each other making the 'sexual feelings/interactions' issue be in the 'red line' zone. In the case of a group of men showering together, the supermajority will be heterosexual putting the 'sexual feelings/interactions' issue well in the safe zone as well as setting a strong peer pressure condition against the few that may be inclined to 'interaction'.

"I have no idea what you think you're talking about. *Keeping gays out of the military* (which, not DADT, is the policy I actually defend) was bad for military effectiveness? "

As I said, the real life test was when front line commanders started to drop requests to kick out suspected gays in the lead up war and after war started. Quite often behavior speaks much louder than words and strong incentives are a better motivator for getting at the truth of the matter than analysis done comfortably at a desk. If commanders thought that gay service members hurt military effectiveness they would have increased DADT prosecutions before going into combat in order to minimize the number of gays in their units as best as possible. If they thought the gay members contributed to the odds that they and their fellow soldiers would make it out alive they would drop off 'cleaning' their units of gays. The fact is banning gays in the military was a piece of luxiorious social engineering on behalf of conservatives that was de facto dropped when it really mattered.

If you think about it, there's really no reason to chaf so much when I point out that the opposition to lifting the ban isn't really motivated by concern for 'military readiness'. Do social conservatives really feel indifferent about gays and the social acceptance of homosexuality? No they don't. They clearly don't like it. Do social conservatives tend toward a 'holistic' view of society rather than a more technocratic, compartmentalized one? Yes they do.

So let's just assume that lifting the ban has absolutely no problems in terms of the technocratic metric of 'military effectivness'. Should we expect social conservatives to be happy? No we wouldn't. After all, if lifting the ban presents no military problems and you lift the ban then you knock down one of the few anti-gay social norms that are still technically in force. If you're really a social conservative and you really think the increasing social acceptance of gays is a bad thing then why wouldn't eliminating one of the few remaining norms against gays also be a bad thing even if it didn't technically cause you any problems with the military?

What if lifting the ban did present technocratic problems in terms of 'military effectiveness'? As long as the problems were not a total diaster, we'd expect social conservatives to be happy. If lifting the ban ended up causing problems social conservatives would not only have an argument to keep an anti-gay social norm (and with fewer and fewer such norms left, they should certainly love one that gets stronger rather than weaker), they'd also have an argument towards trying to establish new social norms elsewhere (for example, if lifting the ban on gays hurts the military, then that could be used to argue for bans on gays elsewhere such as in private schools, priests, etc.). Instead of playing defense an opportunity to go on the offense would be a potent gain.

What if lifting the ban did not present any technocratic problems with the military? Once again let's 'follow the money' so to speak. If the ban does protect the military, then social conservatives have little to loose, even some potential gains by it being dropped. If the ban doesn't protect the military, though, then social conservatives only loose by the ban being dropped. Their minimal loss position would be to keep the ban by arguing the specture of potential problems but if the ban gets lifted, the bluff called, and no serious problems develop then they loose the most.

This is why I say the argument for the ban has been flawed by the right since before Bush failed to reverse Clinton's DADT (which was not technically a change in the law but a change in its enforcement style as was pointed out). It was pretty much dishonest from the start. Even if some who support the ban honestly believe that they win on the technocratic issue of 'military effectiveness', the strategy was still flawed from the start since social conservatives opted to yield 'home court advantage' in the debate.

By that I mean they more or less conceded to liberals that gays should be treated equally *unless* there was some technocratic reason that doing so would be costly. Hence the debate focused on whether or not gay service members cause military units to perform poorly in some way that can be objectively measured. By centering the debate in this manner, social conservatives basically bet the farm on a rather narrow technocratic field from which there was no retreat. If they lost the technocratic argument there was no other ground to retreat and attack from.

It would have been interesting had social conservatives mounted a more honest defense that was centered on their traditional 'home court advantage' of society as a whole. In other words an argument that went more or less like "gays in military units themselves may have no real impact on military effectiveness....hell maybe it would even be slightly better for some military units since there some very talented, very good gay soldiers but a general social norm against gays is important to maintain esp. now that we are leaving behind the idea that gays should be treated only as criminals to be punished or lunatics to be 'cured'....". Not that I would have agreed but it would have been a more honest argument and even one that was potentially winnable.

"You're right. Folks who just can't wrap their minds around the notion of modesty don't have a shared frame of reference. "

How about this for a shared frame of reference. I'll read what you actually write and you will read what I actually write. When you respond to what I write, you'll respond to what was actually written by me and not by what the imaginary me that exists only in your head has fantasized that I wrote. I think that's a frame of reference we can both share, since I'm already there we are halfway there.

So, we're hypocritical or don't mean reason #1 if we also have reason #2 for opposing a policy? I've never agreed with that kind of thinking. It's always possible to have multiple reasons for opposing a policy, and one isn't being deceptive or "hiding the real reason" or whatever if one would oppose some policy on the basis of reason #2 even if reason #1 weren't there. If anything, this means that one just has many good reasons to oppose the policy! Naturally I'm concerned about the other societal repercussions of the homosexualization of the military. I'd have to be stupid or non-conservative not to be concerned. That doesn't make me in any respect dishonest.

By the way, I'm also disgusted at the thought of all the brainwashing, sensitivity training, and career destruction that is coming down the pike in the military for people who happen to think as I do, even if they're excellent soldiers. The military is a great place for this kind of thing, as we have already seen with women in the military and men who dare to say anything against it or to take a politically incorrect position. That might have something to do with military effectiveness too, huh? But who cares, the liberals would say, so long as the "arc of justice" is being advanced.

Saying that commanders didn't kick out homosexuals when they needed to go into war hardly (even if true) shows that in general homosexuals are needed for military effectiveness or that keeping them out from the outset, by a question at recruitment, is a "failure" in terms of military effectiveness. After all, had those people not been recruited, someone else presumably would have been. Sometimes you have to work with what you have, and it causes all kinds of problems when you fill up available spots with trained people with whom there is some problem but who are now, in fact, filling those spots when you don't have a lot of time to train others and need to act immediately. To take an extreme example, if I'm in a crazy situation where I happen to be the only person available to take up a gun and fight off the zombies, it doesn't follow that recruiting (short, near-sighted) women to fight on the battlefield is a good idea!

I think many heterosexual males will not put up much of a fight against having to shower with females.

You can't be serious. In the 90's 65% of the soldiers were married, though it is less now. Of course married men wouldn't want to shower with women, and not just because their wives wouldn't allow it. Would some young unmarried men not mind? Of course, but I'll bet you a whole lot less than you think. What evidence have you that men like to shower with women with whom they don't have an interest, or reason to think women would like to shower with men who they know aren't a threat?

The issue of sexual attraction in itself ("I don't want to be near someone who may find me attractive") I think is overblown.

I made this same point earlier that attraction isn't the real reason, and isn't a great argument. But I think the reasons not to do it are self-evident enough that I think it a laughable part of an argument, and the fact that one might have to have mixed showers under some an emergency has no force at all. That's like saying "well when dying of thirst people often try drinking radiator fluid and urine before they find water so what's the problem if Johnnie does that now?" It's and absurd argument, and shows how far from reality one is to make such an argument.

Actually it's less 'gay = black' and more 'opposing getting rid of DADT = opposing Truman's integration order'. Both are making/made dishonest arguments about 'military readiness' when the real agenda is using the military for conservative social engineering.

This is simply begging the question. The black segregation issue was about fairness and justice; the gays in the military isn't ... unless you buy the "being gay is just like being black" in the first place.

The issue of sexual attraction in itself ("I don't want to be near someone who may find me attractive") I think is overblown.

Let me clarify what I said. I don't think the attraction issue is the real issue in the shower case, but I don't mean that sexual attraction isn't a problem generally, because it is. As I said earlier, I saw this in my alma mater with a gay roommate. In this particular case (I drew a gay roommate in a dorm for a semester as a freshman) it was five guys from a dorm that moved into a house our senior year. He came out before we rented the house, and though all of us were very surprised we all went through on the basis of friendship. But our gay friend developed a crush on the roommate that was less familiar to all of us, and it wasn't a pleasant time. It wasn't very comfortable for any of us, and I didn't even talk very much to the crushee. There is a reason why we were all guys to begin with. Guys understand each other and we're here to study not be a social experiment.

What if lifting the ban did not present any technocratic problems with the military? Once again let's 'follow the money' so to speak. If the ban does protect the military, then social conservatives have little to loose, even some potential gains by it being dropped. If the ban doesn't protect the military, though, then social conservatives only loose by the ban being dropped. Their minimal loss position would be to keep the ban by arguing the specture of potential problems but if the ban gets lifted, the bluff called, and no serious problems develop then they loose the most.

I think we all know that it will declared a success because political correctness demands that it be. If that isn't obvious nothing is. Pretending that their is any intention by the advocates of gays openly serving to gauge effectiveness and adjust in any way strains credulity.

Even if some who support the ban honestly believe that they win on the technocratic issue of 'military effectiveness', the strategy was still flawed from the start since social conservatives opted to yield 'home court advantage' in the debate.

By that I mean they more or less conceded to liberals that gays should be treated equally *unless* there was some technocratic reason that doing so would be costly. … It would have been interesting had social conservatives mounted a more honest defense that was centered on their traditional 'home court advantage' of society as a whole.

... it would have been a more honest argument and even one that was potentially winnable.

You may be right, and I made a similar point with the "attraction in shower" issue before you joined the debate. But if so it wasn't dishonesty, nor was it disigenuousnous. Many people aren't philosophers Boonton, and unless you want people saying you're dishonest when you make bad or question begging arguments in support of your views, I'd advise you not to assume that of others. It isn't charitable, but more importantly it shows you really don't understand how people make decisions. People who disagreed with my point on the showers weren't being dishonest.

Multiple reasons for opposing a policy? Sure that's quite possible, in fact its likely since most people suffer from some degree of confirmation bias. But rhetorically multiple reasons have not been presented. Instead we get a very minutely focused argument about military effectiveness which doesn't really stand up to much scrutiny as evidenced by this embarassingly sloppy shower discussion that opened this post.

"brainwashing, sensitivity training, and career destruction ..." blah blah blah, a different topic. The military does a lot of 'sensitivity training' about different races too that's not an argument for having a single race military. If some training is stupid, is brainwashing or whatnot then that's a beef you have with the training, not with gays in the military just as the solution to over the top 'brainwashing' training about blacks isn't to institute an all white military but to modify or abolish the training.

"Saying that commanders didn't kick out homosexuals when they needed to go into war hardly (even if true) shows that in general homosexuals are needed for military effectiveness..."

The burden is on advocates of the ban to show that it is desireable. It very well may be that banning anyone born under the sign of Gemini who has red hair and blue eyes and likes vintage heavy metal music will have zero impact on military effectiveness. No one has to prove that there's some super-soldier out there who fits this criteria that our military is suffering from not having in order to reject the idea as stupid.

"After all, had those people not been recruited, someone else presumably would have been..."

Yes but we know that good people with excellent records who we have invested quite a bit of time, money and effort in training have been dismissed without any evidence showing that they were disruptive or problematic, just because other people can be found to do what they can do doesn't mean that there is no cost to either losing them or excluding them from the outset.

"To take an extreme example, if I'm in a crazy situation where I happen to be the only person available to take up a gun and fight off the zombies, it doesn't follow that recruiting (short, near-sighted) women to fight on the battlefield is a good idea!"

Indeed however booting out the red headed, blue eyed, Gemini metal head for no good reason makes it more likely that the next best option is someone more like you. You're letting two facts about the military decieve you. One is that its made up of a huge number of people and the other is that unlike action movies it has a lot of redundancy. If the best soldier was killed tomorrow, his place will be seemlessly taken by other soldiers. That doesn't mean his loss would be irrelevant or wouldn't strain the organization. It would but you wouldn't likely see it in the types of metrics one uses to measure an organization as large as the military.

Mark
"You can't be serious."

Only a bit in jest. In reality though I think you'd agree if communal mixed gender showers were seriously proposed the strongest most passionate objections are most likely to come from women. But I grant you that many thoughtful men, after a bit of High Schoolish kidding, would agree with the problems entailed in the idea.

"I made this same point earlier that attraction isn't the real reason, and isn't a great argument. But I think the reasons not to do it are self-evident enough that I think it a laughable part of an argument, and the fact that one might have to have mixed showers under some an emergency has no force at all. That's like saying "well when dying of thirst people often try drinking radiator fluid and urine before they find water so what's the problem if Johnnie does that now?" It's and absurd argument, and shows how far from reality one is to make such an argument."

Well in terms of mixed gender showers attraction is a pretty big reason. You would have a lot of messing around (married or not) unless you had some serious compensating norms that countered what would happen 'naturally'. But the emergancy issue does show that communal showers in general irk many of us. We tolerate them in some cases because the costs of demanding private showers becomes too high in some cases. With mixed gender the 'irksome factors' go very high so we only accept them in dire emergencies. Not really sure here if you guys are actually disagreeing with anything I said or just think you're supposed to be disagreeing.....

"This is simply begging the question. The black segregation issue was about fairness and justice; the gays in the military isn't ... unless you buy the "being gay is just like being black" in the first place."

It's impossible to treat a gay person unfairly or unjustly? I think you're being a bit unfair to segregationists. Some of them probably did admit that it was unfair but they honestly believed integrated units would result in racial divisions and fighting leading to an impaired military. If it could be established to you that lifting the ban in itself does not impair the military would you consider the ban unjust or not?

"But our gay friend developed a crush on the roommate that was less familiar to all of us, and it wasn't a pleasant time. It wasn't very comfortable for any of us, and I didn't even talk very much to the crushee. There is a reason why we were all guys to begin with. Guys understand each other and we're here to study not be a social experiment."

It seems the problem was less the existence of the gay person but the problems that resulted from his crush which really means the problems that resulted from his behavior. I agree here you have issues in the military that you don't have outside where 'office romances' and such can be tolerated within limits (although today's views on sexual harassment have made many common old fashioned relationships like the boss who marries his secretary or the professor who hooks up with a student problematic). But then this isn't a 'shower problem' but a relationship one. If you guys all had private showers you'd still have the awkwardness that results when a group of platonic friends suddenly gets one or more of the group aiming for a non-platonic relationship. Just as heterosexual soldiers have to keep their sexual relationships outside of the chain of command so would homosexual ones IMO.

... DADT actually saw more soldiers expelled from the military, cases actually went down as we went to war in Iraq and Afghanistan. Cases are generally initiated near the bottom of the chain of command. Why did this happen? Because going into combat most leaders wanted all their men and saw no problem with gay members unless they were doing something disruptive.

Would your information per chance be from the Wikipedia page, where it says "These statistics are only from those who came forward to the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network"? The differences don't look statistically significant, and your confident expressions of the cause are not warranted in any case unless you provide some supporting information for why you can assume a self-serving explanation.

If some training is stupid, is brainwashing or whatnot then that's a beef you have with the training, not with gays in the military

If justice does not require allowing homosexuals in the military, I see no reason to give more occasion for that sort of dreadful sensitivity training. It has been hugely unjust to people with normal opinions in the case of women, and I say the same in the case of women. I think most women don't belong in the military, and those who are there should be doing largely segregated jobs and safe jobs well behind the lines, as in the old, old days.

Boonton, you're just scattershot. Somebody says something and you blurt out whatever comes to your mind. My problem is with homosexuals in the military for many reasons. It's not true that my beef is "with the training" rather than "with gays in the military." My beef, of course, is with both. My point in the comment to which you are responding is that this is what the military has turned out to be like with women in the military, and the more homosexuals there are, and the more open they are allowed to be, the more the normal instincts of the military personnel have to be beaten out of them, the more of such training we'll get. There is no right to serve in the military, and if having some class of people do so is going to elicit more of this totalitarian garbage, that _is_ an argument against it. Whether there are counterarguments will depend in no small part on whether it's actually wrong for some other reason not to have these people serve. Arguably, such a counterargument concerning justice could be made regarding race. (And the military wasn't as PC at that time, either.) Assuming that the same is true of sodomites, including open and proud sodomites, is merely begging the question.

Mark, I get a little confused as to why you keep downplaying "the attraction argument" regarding showering when you also say sensible things like this:

You can't be serious. In the 90's 65% of the soldiers were married, though it is less now. Of course married men wouldn't want to shower with women, and not just because their wives wouldn't allow it. Would some young unmarried men not mind? Of course, but I'll bet you a whole lot less than you think. What evidence have you that men like to shower with women with whom they don't have an interest,

If we called it "the modesty argument," would that be better from your perspective? And if there is a modesty argument, then would you not agree that it applies to men's showering with men they know to be homosexual and to women's showering with lesbians? Would not a wife legitimately prefer that her husband not shower, still less be _forced_ to shower, with a homosexual man and a husband legitimately prefer that his wife not be forced to shower with a lesbian?

The point of Mark's roommate story, of course, is that they wanted a group of _guys_ rooming together so that they could know in advance that the friendships would be Platonic. When liberals like Boonton say things like, "But this is just the sort of problem you get when one person wants a friendship to be Platonic and the other doesn't," they ignore that obvious point. They ignore it because they assume that homosexuality must be ignored in choices like roommate choice and because they assume that there would be something wrong with discriminating on the basis of both gender and sexuality so as to be quite sure that no romantic attractions would arise between roommates so that the roommates can concentrate better on studying, as Mark said. This is so basic and so obvious that liberals must know that it is what the roommates were thinking and must know that it is what those who disagree with them will say, but they pretend not to know. The kinds of faux-clueless comments that people like Boonton make are one of the most annoying and exhausting hazards of blogging: You have people saying things like that and have to decide whether to point out the obvious.

The entire question is academic.Homosexuals have served in the military all over the world since the beginning of organized wars. This includes America;the Civil War,both world wars,Korea,Vietnam etc.
They have minded their business and bothered no one for the most part. So what?
There is no reason why homosexuals should not be allowed to serve openly in the US military;they do so today in Israel and Europe and no one there has any objections,simply because people there are much more tolerant.
But allowing them to serve openly in America would most likely cause problems,not because of the gays themselves,but because of the rampant homophobia in America.
Fellow soldiers would be much more likely to harass and even physically attack known homosexuals,and superior officers who happened to be bigoted against homosxuals could make life extremely difficult for them,and give them poor evaluations even if they had done exemplary work,thus jeopardizing their military careers.
Consider Isarel.A strong and highly disciplined army is absolutely essential if this tiny nation is to survive.
Do you think they would allow homosexuals to serve there if they were a serious liability?

If we called it "the modesty argument," would that be better from your perspective? And if there is a modesty argument, then would you not agree that it applies to men's showering with men they know to be homosexual and to women's showering with lesbians? Would not a wife legitimately prefer that her husband not shower, still less be _forced_ to shower, with a homosexual man and a husband legitimately prefer that his wife not be forced to shower with a lesbian?

Well I guess I like that term better, and I agree that all the things you mention are undesirable. It just seems to me the social aspects rather than ones that can be characterized in terms of the private will be the worst part.

It seems the problem was less the existence of the gay person but the problems that resulted from his crush which really means the problems that resulted from his behavior.

Can you really call this intellectually honest? You shamelessly call those who disagree with you with dishonest, while you offer stuff up like this? Amazing.

This is simply begging the question. The black segregation issue was about fairness and justice; the gays in the military isn't ... unless you buy the "being gay is just like being black" in the first place.

It's impossible to treat a gay person unfairly or unjustly?

What? That doesn't follow. Begging the question means that the truth of the proposition one is attempting to show is assumed during argumentation. In other words, if one didn't believe it already, the argument can't help.

The burden is on advocates of the ban to show that it is desireable. It very well may be that banning anyone born under the sign of Gemini who has red hair and blue eyes and likes vintage heavy metal music will have zero impact on military effectiveness. No one has to prove that there's some super-soldier out there who fits this criteria that our military is suffering from not having in order to reject the idea as stupid.

Show it is desirable? By who? Are you even listening to yourself? This has the abstract dreamlike, faux-confident "hey, what if" feel of a B-movie college class. I mean for all we know ...

Our whole solar system ... could be, like ... one tiny atom in the fingernail of some other giant being. This is too much! That means ... one tiny atom in my fingernail could be ... Could be one little ... tiny universe.

The entire question is academic.Homosexuals have served in the military all over the world since the beginning of organized wars. This includes America;the Civil War,both world wars,Korea,Vietnam etc.
They have minded their business and bothered no one for the most part. So what?

It is well known that gays serve in the military, and yes, during the CW. The issue isn't about gays serving, it is about gays serving openly and gaining approval in society. That is gained one step at a time. If it were truly "academic" in the sense you seem to mean, it wouldn't matter to gays either now would it? They want to serve, and they can serve so I guess there isn't a problem.

I caused some confusion before by saying this before, but all I mean is that people lying is a fact of life. Students lie about religious beliefs to get into the college they want all the time. I'm not approving it, I'm just saying it happens and if they choose to join an institution whose values they don't affirm (and intend to feign acceptance) because of the benefits it is a personal decision. There is no solution to this and at least they implicitly recognize the legitimacy of the institution's decision to freely determine this . But if they can force the institution to allow them to declare their intent and subvert the principles of the institution by legal or legislative agitation, then they can try to make their behavior acceptable to society, or at least corrupt the institution to reflect their valiues --the next best thing.

The way agenda is all about approval --always has been, and always will be. If this isn't obvious nothing is.

I think you were on a better track when you identified 3 reasons why people don't like different sex communal showers:

Privacy, modesty and sexual feelings/actions

The 'attraction issue' falls clearly into the 3rd. After I pointed out, though, that this way of thinking undercuts the argument that having gays in a communal shower is 'just like' having different sex communal showers, you're muddying the issue by making modesty simply about sexual attraction.

Women and men do not like the idea of communal showers even when their fellow shower mates have no sexual attraction to them. I'm sure a 60 yr old woman would feel very uncomfortable showering with a group of 20 yr old men & not because she fears they will be sexually attracted to her.

Likewise when men or women are alone together in a same sex environment there is some looser standards when it comes to nudity but for the most part they don't toss off all their clothes and hang around nude. This isn't because they can't be 100% sure there isn't some gay or bisexual person in their midst who might be attracted to them. This is because modesty extends as an issue even when sexual attraction has no bearing. If you want to say that any of the 3 issue above should be merged you can say that maybe privacy and modesty overlap enough to be considered the same t hing.

"The point of Mark's roommate story, of course, is that they wanted a group of _guys_ rooming together so that they could know in advance that the friendships would be Platonic..."

Which falls into the category of you can't always get what you want. There is no right to Platonic friendships. When you become friends with someone there is always the possibility that one or both of you might feel a desire to go beyond a Platonic friendship and that may or may not be a good thing. It is a very common story for groups of friends of mixed genders to start out platonic but one or more develop as couples and even if that doesn't happen romantic relationships that are formed outside the group tend to intrude at some point into the group. There is no right to insist that this never happen. If there is please let us know where to find it as plenty of Beatles fans would love to apply it against Yoko Ono.

In terms of trying to prevent such situations by prescreening friends and roommates. I don't really object to people choosing not to have a homosexual roommate just as I don't object to people would rather not have a roommate of a different gender. I think the housing discrimination laws should be written so this sort of individual choice is protected since it's simply going to be counter productive to try to force everyone's tastes into uniformity.

But in terms of gays, I asked the question of whether it's possible to treat gays unfairly and unjustly and I think it's revealing that the question remains unanswered. Let's revise Mark's story a bit. Say it was a group of friends of both genders, one girl develops a crush on one of the guys and as a result of the guy not being interested in her the circle of friends broke apart as some ended up taking sides and others just felt uncomfortable being drawn into a big deal of drama. Everyone would say this is kind of sad but hardly unusual and it's just one of those things that happens as we grow up. No one would say the girl was a villian for developing a crush nor would the guy be for not sharing those feelings. Could this have been avoided if the guys had insisted only only being friends with other guys leaving girls totally out except for romantic interests? Sure but then there are plenty of very good platonic cross-gender friendships so making such a policy would have cheated them out of potentially rewarding friendships. I don't think my comments here have been 'faux-clueless'.

So in terms of Mark's friend what is the undercurrent here? That he just shouldn't have existed? Shouldn't have gone to college? Shouldn't what? At any what point would you say a cultural conservative starts to be acting unjustly and unfairly towards gays? I assume you'd agree it would be unjust to kill them with lynch mobs or beat them up. Would it be unjust and unfair to bully them? Treat them like criminals?

Looking over Mark's story I see the following:

1. He drew the gay roommate in Freshman year randomly to live in a dorm w/5 guys.

2. The gay roommate came out to them before Senior year.

3. Knowing this, they all rented a house together in senior year when the gay roommate developed a crush on a 'less familiar roommate'.

4. As a result of this lots of people felt uncomfortable and awkward. Mark partially shunned the object of the crush (who I assume wasn't also gay)

In terms of fairness, I can't see anything here that the gay roommate did that was unjust or unfair. In fact, shunning the object of the crush seems rather unfair and childish and I wonder if Mark feels he would do things differently if he had to do it again. In terms of this group of friends breaking up after being together from Freshman to Senior Year.....well in the big scheme of things that's not at all that unusual or horrible. If there wasn't a gay roommate, friendships like this fall apart all the time. For example, if the gay roommate had turned out to be straight there could have still been a blow up if he developed a crush on another roommate's girl. This isn't really a problem of justice or fairness here but more a problem of different people all having ot learn how to live together peacefully....or recognizing that they have grown up to a point where their lives are each taking different paths and the time has come to find different living arrangements.

I think they were rather foolish, given their goal of focusing on study, to include the homosexual roommate in the rooming arrangement once he "came out." I think it's unfortunate that they felt uncomfortable about telling him that the deal was off. If they had, he should have understood, but he probably wouldn't have and would have been upset and hurt, accusing them of doing wrong by excluding him.

Boonton-
well, if you claim to be responding to what we say, and you want us to respond to what you say, you've already violated that agreement.

You claimed opposing forced homosexual integration is the same as opposing race integration.
That would mean those being integrated are the same on the level being discussed.
You then got pissy when I pointed out that race and sexuality aren't the same.

Long story short: you broke your own rules. Shocker, I'm sure, to all of us here.

"I think they were rather foolish, given their goal of focusing on study, to include the homosexual roommate in the rooming arrangement once he "came out." "

The coming out though didn't seem to cause the problem with 'studying', it was the complications that resulted when he developed a crush. Clearly this could just as easily had happened had this group of friends been of mixed genders. Likewise even if you kept the group of the same gender and heterosexuals you run the risk that jealously of another guys girl would cause a similiar problem. If they were all interested in only study I suppose they could have all taken vows of total chastity leaving no chance romantic complications of any sort would have disrupted their years of study....but most college kids opt for the risks that romance has.

"If they had, he should have understood, but he probably wouldn't have and would have been upset and hurt, accusing them of doing wrong by excluding him."

He would have been right. How would you feel if a group of women excluded you because they didn't trust any hetrosexual women not to hit on their husbands or boyfriends? But as time passed one would hopefully learn that says more about the weaknesses of those doing the excluding than those excluded. Does Mark really feel that 3-4 years of friendship with this guy was worth nothing? It seems pretty uncharitable to assume so just because the guy was gay.

"You claimed opposing forced homosexual integration is the same as opposing race integration.
That would mean those being integrated are the same on the level being discussed.
You then got pissy when I pointed out that race and sexuality aren't the same."

Forced integration? Hmmmm Lydia told us there is no right to serve in the military and since we don't have a draft how is integration here forced? Look at it a different way. I throw a big party every week and never invite redheads. You like that. One week I decide redheads are just as much fun and start inviting them. Am I 'forcing you to integrate' with redheads? Not unless you have some type of pre-existing right to join my party, which you don't. Or unless you have some type of right to dictate the guest list of my party, which again you don't.

Anyway my objection wasn't that race and sexuality are the same but that the arguments employed against gays in the military are almost exactly mirror the arguments against integration (even hypotheticals about communal showers). You haven't really explained the differences other than the assertion that integration of blacks was 'about justice'. OK no argument there but why are gays excluded from a justice argument here?

Looking over Mark's story I see the following:
1. He drew the gay roommate in Freshman year randomly to live in a dorm w/5 guys.
2. The gay roommate came out to them before Senior year.
3. Knowing this, they all rented a house together in senior year when the gay roommate developed a crush on a 'less familiar roommate'.
4. As a result of this lots of people felt uncomfortable and awkward. Mark partially shunned the object of the crush (who I assume wasn't also gay

)

Not that is matters too much, but I had two gay roommates in college. The first as a freshman as just the luck of the draw, and the second my senior year in the house with 5 guys. But I never said anyone shunned him, and that didn't happen. I said it was uncomfortable. I knew the crusher far better than the crushee, so I never heard that side directly. I heard one side of the story and I sorta thought he was joking or testing my tolerance capabilities at first. But later I found out there was more to it than I thought. I for one was by no means miserable, and I didn't mean to imply that it was that difficult for me personally to deal with. But I wasn't on the receiving end of it and I suppose the crushee didn't talk about it for a reason. Look, we were friends, we didn't look for reasons to dislike each other. Probably most of us have been in similarly uncomfortable situations with hetero ex-partners of some type. The point is not that it was awful, or that an issue was intentionally made of it, but that the whole point of gender-specific living arrangements is to have no drama and there was, and that was unfortunate.

Anyway my objection wasn't that race and sexuality are the same but that the arguments employed against gays in the military are almost exactly mirror the arguments against integration (even hypotheticals about communal showers). You haven't really explained the differences other than the assertion that integration of blacks was 'about justice'. OK no argument there but why are gays excluded from a justice argument here?

Boonton, why don't you just cut to the chase and say that you think being gay is genetic? You do don't you? Wouldn't that be a less "dishonest" debate? ;-)

Mark and Lydia, I see that Boonton has found WWWtW. He was a prolific commenter over at the old Evangelical Outpost for years. Let's just say you are getting Boontonian logic. Expect straw man arguments and arguments where you go in circles refuting each point but constantly coming back to the start. Also expect to get dragged into side arguments that have nothing to do with the original post. I would advise you to just ignore him unless you want to be answering his posts forever.

The coming out though didn't seem to cause the problem with 'studying', it was the complications that resulted when he developed a crush.

Sigh. And round and round the barn we go. Mark and any sensible person knows perfectly well that they just _didn't want to go there_. They didn't want that type of complication to arise _at all_ among roommates. By including the homosexual student, they opened that particular possibility. No, it wouldn't have been wrong to exclude him, anymore than it was wrong to exclude women, and for some (though not all) of the same reasons.

I'll probably be closing comments on this thread soon. We're at over 130 comments and counting, and there are plenty of other good threads on the blog. Not to mention the fact that Boonton, with his time-wasting denseness and his equivalences-that-aren't-equivalences is exactly the sort of time-wasting liberal commentator I hoped wouldn't find this post.

"The point is not that it was awful, or that an issue was intentionally made of it, but that the whole point of gender-specific living arrangements is to have no drama and there was, and that was unfortunate."

I'm not really sure this was ever a realistic expectation to begin with. I'm sure many of your hetro roommates had some type of romantic lives in college and even without sexual relationships people living together generate drama. You could minimize this with a single gender arrangement because when you have a hetrosexual supermajority a large group of people of mixed gender living together like from Friends are almost guranteed to start hooking up and breaking up. Even with single gender straights living together though, you can't expect romantic relationships to never end up causing drama in the house (which is why I raised the hypothetical of what would happen if a straight roommate hooked up with another straight roommate's girlfriend). It also doesn't sound like the experience was all that horrible for anyone involved.

"Well it may have been; I've been mugged by reality a few times since then..."

Is this, though, really a fair way to describe the two friendships you had in college with gay men?

"Boonton, why don't you just cut to the chase and say that you think being gay is genetic? You do don't you? Wouldn't that be a less "dishonest" debate? ;-)"

I strongly suspect it is or its a combination of genes and environment that becomes more or less immutable early on. I have heard some women argue that with women there is a greater 'choice' factor involved but since I'm neither a gay woman or gay man I can't really speak from any direct experience.

Expect straw man arguments and arguments where you go in circles refuting each point but constantly coming back to the start.

I know, but I believe that a seasoned debater should be able to deal with this nonetheless. In that case, look a few steps ahead and give the argument they should be giving, and no doubt will eventually give, or ought to, rather than the one they are, and drastically speed up the end game. For example, see my "cut to the chase" comment above. Also, pointing out flawed assumptions is crucial to any debate, even the most scrupulously fair and honest ones, and often is where the real action is. For these reasons Boonton doesn't bother me at all.